The Government of India has notified that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) will now be responsible for granting equivalence to Secondary (Class 10) and Senior Secondary (Class 12) certificates issued by different School Education Boards in the country.
The notification, published in the e-Gazette on September 6, 2025, by the Department of School Education and Literacy under the Ministry of Education, states that NCERT will exercise this role for the purpose of student admissions to higher education institutions and eligibility for Central, State, and Union Territory government jobs.
This notification supersedes an earlier order dated November 15, 2021, which had entrusted the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) with the same responsibility. Going forward, NCERT will carry out the function through its National Assessment Centre - Performance Assessment, Review and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development (PARAKH) - established under the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020.
The government said this arrangement will ensure a rigorous, transparent, and academically sound process for determining equivalence of certificates across boards. The system will apply to all recognised Central, State, and private school boards created by an Act of Parliament, State legislature, statutory bodies, or through executive orders.
According to the notification, the equivalence granted by NCERT will hold nationwide validity and automatically establish parity among school boards. This is expected to facilitate smoother student mobility across boards and simplify inter-board migration for both academic progression and employment opportunities.
